School Management in a Decentralized Context - A Comparative Analysis Romania – the U.S.A

Basically, decentralization of educational system represents the transfer of authority, responsibility and resources needed to make decisions and to ensure general and financial management to schools and local communities. Through decentralization schools become the main decision educational maker. This paper presents comparison two educational systems from the perspective of decentralization, US system and Romanian system, emphasizing the roles of different actors involved in the educational process. In US educational system there are three types of authorities: federal or national, state, and local educational authorities. The federal government has no direct authority on pre-university system; its role is limited by the American Constitution. The decision making and control center is a local one. Romania initiated the process of moving from a centralized educational system to a decentralized one and now the decision makers are looking for equilibrium between authorities at different levels.decentralization; educational system; educational authorities; school as local decision maker; local responsibility.

Enhancing Student Success through Social Emotional Competence Development

Identifying the path to achieving academic performance and social success is the desire of any student at the beginning of their career. A number of studies have attempted to identify the factors that contribute to social success and academic performance and have found the following: external factors such as (gender, parent’s education level, and high school GPA) and internal factors (intrapersonal - self-confidence, self-control, emotional health, managing anxiety and stress and interpersonal-involvement and development of relationships). This chapter focuses on internal factors that contribute to social and academic success, in short, on students’ socio-emotional competencies, and presents the concept of emotional intelligence, its approaches, and its component elements. Afterward, the chapter describes the concept of socio-emotional skills and socio-emotional learning, so that in the last part of the chapter we propose a model of training socio-emotional competencies, a set of activities that was implemented experimentally for 3 years within an institutional development program in the field of educational counseling. Conclusion and recommendations regarding the importance of counseling services offered to students will also be mentioned

Next manager. Academic Background versus Labor Market Requirements

The employability of of graduates is today one of the major problems both of universities and economical environment. Also, employability, inserting optimum professional and social life is a problem of each graduate. It finds today, that a large part of are young drop out of school and thus possibility of qualify at a high level or have difficulty entering the labor market. European Commission recommends for member states reforming education, especially of the university so as to ensure the professionalization of the young people, developing their professional skills and transversal, harnessing their potential, enhance the relevance of education for youth and the labor market. Bologna Declaration shows that employability (ability to engage, to maintain the service and mobility in the labor market) is defining higher education, whose role is to familiarize students with the skills and competencies that individuals need to place on the job. (Bologna, 1999) This paper addresses the issue of employability of higher economic studies graduates, and analyzes a positive experience resulting from the provision of complex information, guidance, advice and orientation to students in POSDRU "Practice today to become manager of tomorrow". The paper presents the results of a complex study conducted on the impact that these services have had on the students involved, from three perspectives: students, employers, who guided activity students at the university level. The results show that there is a direct relationship between the increase in the number of students who have benefited from guidance, counseling and professional development appropriate to their needs and the number who have developed personal skills to substantiate decisions regarding their career paths and educational because of of information, advice, guidance provided in the project. These services have helped students to develop, to know better, know their own skills and abilities and to focus better on the labor market and / or educational services market. The conclusions have great relevance as a model of best practice in the development of complex programs of partnership between universities and businesses so that employability of graduates to grow and develop